


touch

by kirani



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Child Abuse, Happy Ending, M/M, Miscommunication, POV Alternating, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 14:26:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18967072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirani/pseuds/kirani
Summary: Adam wasn’t in the habit of initiating contact, not even with Gansey, for fear that it would encourage others to touch him. And Ronan was the king of withholding touch. He racked his brain but he couldn’t think of a time he had touched Ronan skin to skin before, the two of them both avoiding touch for nearly a year.And there was no one else it could be.





	touch

**Author's Note:**

> Written for jamieism as a gift from aionwatha  
> I had to move a few things around but it's largely canon compliant

Depending on where you began the story, it was about soulmates.

Before Adam had learned better, he had been enamored with his soulmark. He often found himself tracing the shape of it in the mirror, fingers dragging across his jaw over the pale blue.

His father hated it.

He learned soon enough not to show interest in the mark, lest his father covered it with a bruise.

(Sometimes his father didn’t care if he’d been staring at it or not, he’d bruise it anyways. Those were the worst, because he hadn’t even gotten to enjoy the daydream first.)

“There’s no one out there waitin’,” he’d shout. “Who would wait for you?”

So Adam stopped touching it. Stopped thinking about it.

Until Ronan Lynch touched it.

He missed it when it did happen.

Adam had angered his father the night before and now sported a splotchy purple bruise across his jaw, obscuring the soulmark entirely.

Ronan had looked at him and his hand had come up seemingly without his permission and traced his fingertips over the bruise.

“Parrish,” he mumbled.

Adam’s face heated with embarrassment.

“It’s nothing,” Adam snapped back, pulling back from Ronan’s hand and studying the cuff of his sweater.

He could feel Ronan’s eyes on him for another moment before the other boy huffed out “whatever” and went to sit at his own desk.

It wasn’t until a couple of days later when the purple of the bruise began to fade that Adam noticed the soulmark had changed.

At first glance, he thought it was the bruise fading strangely, but when he looked closer he could tell that it was the mark was showing through.

Instead of the pale blue that his mark had been since birth, it was breaking through the bruise in a vivid shade of aquamarine.

He double checked that he was alone and returned to the mirror. He traced his fingers along the outline of the bright blue showing through the bruise and allowed himself a moment of panic.

His father would cover the mark in bruises for sure, now.

Who had it been? No one had touched his face beside his father, had they?

Unless…

Ronan.

Ronan had touched his face, just the barest brush, when he had seen the new bruise. Why hadn’t he said anything?

Adam wasn’t in the habit of initiating contact, not even with Gansey, for fear that it would encourage others to touch him. And Ronan was the king of withholding touch. He racked his brain but he couldn’t think of a time he had touched Ronan skin to skin before, the two of them both avoiding touch for nearly a year.

And there was no one else there could be.

~

Ronan didn’t notice his soulmark had changed until he had sat back in his desk.

He had written off the warmth in his fingers as the touch of his skin to Parrish’s. But as he picked up a pen to fiddle with as the professor began to lecture, he noticed his fingertips had blushed from their normal pale green to a dark forest green.

He stole a glance at Parrish, slumped in his seat and scribbling madly. There was no sign of the mark beneath the bruise his father had left on his face.

Had he felt the heat? What was he thinking? He would give anything to know.

Parrish was his soulmate. He had touched his _soulmate_.

Really, Ronan didn’t know what had come over him. He had just… needed to touch him.

He deepened his scowl to keep himself from blushing.

It wasn’t the first bruise he’d seen on Parrish — it wasn’t even the first bruise over his unmatched soulmark he had seen — but he had never reached out to touch him before.

He curled his hand into a fist to hide the mark on his fingertips.

Ronan went to class every day that week, driven by a need to catch the first glimpse of Parrish’s new mark.

It began to peek through the second day but he didn’t think Parrish had seen it yet.

The third day he definitely had.

He kept touching his jaw tenderly and darting glances at Ronan when he thought no one was looking.

Ronan kept his hand in a fist.

Surely Parrish knew his mark was on his fingers and was looking for it.

But he couldn’t show him. Wouldn’t? Couldn’t.

He couldn’t name the emotion that kept him hiding. Part of it was just pure stubbornness; he refused to have this conversation at Aglionby. But the rest?

It didn’t matter.

Adam wasn’t interested in him like that. He was with Blue. He was going out of his way to court her, spending money and time on her that he’d never spent on Ronan.

That he never would.

On the fourth day, Ronan drove back to the trailer as he heard Robert Parrish beating his soulmate and left in handcuffs.

~

Gansey picked him up from the hospital and Adam tried not to be upset that it wasn’t Ronan.

He really needed to talk to Ronan.

The entire time he had been in there, his only thought was for Ronan. He had remembered the other boy hiding his mark in class, in his pockets in the halls, in a fist against his father's face…

He’d avoided looking at anyone as always when his father’s marks showed on his face, so he hadn’t noticed Ronan’s change in behavior until his own mark showed through.

But Ronan hadn’t met his eye. Hadn’t said a thing.

Did he think Adam didn’t notice the match? Hadn’t figured out who had touched his skin to make it glow in such a bright blue?

But then he had come back. And now Adam worried about something different: Did he do it because they were soulmates?

Adam hoped not. He wouldn’t have Ronan risking jail for him just because of some mark on their skin.

He didn’t deserve it.

~

Ronan continued to not say anything to Adam.

He avoided being alone with the other boy successfully for three days. But it had to end eventually.

“Lynch?” Ronan winced. Gansey wasn’t home and Noah was nowhere to be seen.

“What do you want, Parrish?” he ground out.

“I need to talk to you.”

It was coming.

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Lynch,” Adam warned, then grabbed his hand from the desk where Ronan was fidgeting with a pen. Adam held his hand up, showing the soulmark. “We need to talk.”

Ronan scowled and snatched his fingers back.

“What do you want me to say?” he snarled.

Instead of answering, Adam dropped his head. “You shouldn’t have done it.”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

“Parrish— ”

“No— ”

“You’re defending him?!”

“You shouldn’t put yourself in danger just because we’re soulmarked!” Adam shouted, finally meeting his eye.

Adam didn’t want him. His soulmate didn’t want him.

“And, what, I was just supposed to leave my soulmate behind to get beat to shit by his own father? Is that what you’d have me do?” Ronan matched his volume. If he was angry he couldn’t cry, right?

“You wouldn’t have if we weren’t!” And, oh, that hurt. Did Adam think so little of him?

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes, I do!”

Dammit, he was going to cry anyway.

“Go fuck yourself, Parrish,” he shot back, then disappeared into his room and slammed the door.

He slid down the door to the floor and hung his head between his knees as silent tears streamed from his eyes. He listened as Adam left Monmouth, then slammed his fists onto the floor in frustration.

Hadn’t he lost enough? Now he was going to lose his soulmate?

~

Things between Adam and Ronan — he refused to think of him as his soulmate when he clearly wasn’t wanted — settled down after that fight.

He focused on ignoring it and he was mostly successful until Blue broke up with him.

“It’s not you. It was never gonna be you,” she told him. “Jesus, Adam, you’re soulmarked! You know it’s not you.”

Adam left. He didn’t know what else to do.

He went back to his room.

Part of him supposed he could go to Monmouth. Try to talk to Ronan again.

But right at the moment, all he wanted was to be alone.

He squashed down the voice in his head that sounded too much like his father, (that no one was waiting for him, that he had ruined everything, that he would always ruin everything) and went to take a shower.

Clean and dry again, he stepped to the mirror over his sink.

He traced his fingers over the blue splotch on his jaw in his reflection. Adam had hoped, at first, when he saw Blue’s unmatched mark. Her pale yellow fingertips would match perfectly to his mark, a brush to the jaw, and how he had always imagined his soulmark to match. Such a gentle touch.

But no, Blue would touch another with her mark, and his had been touched by Ronan Lynch.

The touch had been what he’d dreamed of and exactly the opposite at the same time.

Because the reason for the gentle touch was not love, but concern. A bruise from his father for sneaking out. For Ronan.

And Adam had ruined it.

~

Ronan entered the garage after dismissing his night horror and leaned on the car Adam kneeled beside.

He watched Adam’s eyes as they darted to his fingers, his soulmark, dangling in front of his face.

(They didn’t talk about it, this match, and Ronan thought it was better that way.

He couldn’t tell what Parrish thought of their matched soulmarks. Sometimes he would look at Ronan in a way that betrayed… something. Curiosity? Lust? Ronan couldn’t tell.)

Adam’s hand moved at his side, as though to reach out and touch the mark, but he pulled it back, fisting it in the rag sticking out of his coveralls pocket.

Ronan’s hope died in his chest. He left.

He wanted so desperately to give Adam everything, and contrary to what Adam thought, it wasn’t because they were soulmarked.

Adam denied himself, worked himself too hard, and wouldn’t let anyone in. He deserved more, he deserved to be cared for and to be loved uncoditionally and he deserved it from someone whose intentions were believed.

That wasn’t Ronan.

He couldn’t get himself to stop looking at the other boy, couldn’t get himself to stop touching him when they did by chance or accident. He felt drawn in.

He had started to notice Adam lingering back. He caught the other boy staring sometimes, or running his fingers over his own mark or playing with his fingers as though they wanted to play with a different hand.

Ronan smiled to himself and coveted those moments.

Eventually, someday, Adam would trust him and then he would go for it. He could wait.

 _Manibus_ , he left in Adam’s shitbox, though. He could give him that.

~

He was sitting on Ronan’s bed at the Barns where Ronan had just taken his dream car from Adam’s hands and closed the distance between them with a kiss.

Adam was frozen.

Ronan drew back.

“Parrish?”

“What are you doing?” he whispered into the space between them.

God, he was such an idiot. He wanted this! Why was he stopping them?

“Trying to kiss you,” Ronan smirked.

“Why?”

He had to hear it. He needed that confirmation. Ronan was kissing him because they were soulmarked.

“Because I wanted to, come on, Parrish, I know I haven’t been reading this wrong.”

Ronan’s voice was harsh but Adam could hear the hurt underneath.

Adam caught his fingers. “Not because of this?”

“That doesn’t matter. All that means is that it’ll work if we try. I wanted to kiss you so I did. Can’t it be that simple?”

Could it? Adam stared at the deep green of Ronan’s soulmark and thought it through.

He wanted Ronan. God, he wanted Ronan. And Ronan wanted him. Or at least he said he did. But as Adam thought back on the past few months, he remembered little glances. Little moments.

Had he been so busy trying to hide his own attraction and want for Ronan that he’d been ignoring the signs Ronan had wanted him right back?

The hand creme. The way his touch had lingered when he hauled Adam to his feet after scrying. The court day, his tie done properly and his expression earnest.

And his face right now.

“Okay,” he said simply.

Ronan’s face broke out in a grin and he leaned in again, kissing Adam gently. Adam pulled the fingers he still held up to his jaw, laying them mark to mark.

They gasped apart as the heat flared between their marks.

“It’s only confirmation,” Adam told himself.

Ronan chuckled. Shit, he had said that aloud.

“Lynch,” Adam began, though he didn’t know what he wanted to say.

“Parrish,” Ronan grinned at him, running his fingertips along Adam’s jawline.

Adam closed his eyes and let himself bask in the moment.

He could have this.

Eyes still closed, he leaned forward again, knowing Ronan hadn’t moved, and easily found his lips again. Ronan slipped his soulmarked fingers into Adam’s hair and Adam groaned happily.

He could really have this.

“Parrish,” Ronan said again. Adam opened his eyes. They were wet.

“I’m sorry,” he sniffed.

“Say the word and I’m gone.”

“No!” Adam cried, grabbing at Ronan’s hands to keep him there.

“But if you’ll let me, I’m here,” Ronan continued.

Adam stared at him.

“In whatever way you’ll let me,” he said when Adam remained silent. “If you want to keep the match platonic, I’ll figure it out. But please let me be here for you.”

“Yes,” Adam breathed.

“Yes?”

“Yes,” Adam smiled and kissed Ronan again.

Ronan melted against him and Adam let himself relax into the kiss.

“You’re sure?” Ronan mumbled against his lips.

“Lynch, stop trying to get me to reject you and kiss me already.”

Ronan slid his fingers back into Adam’s hair and deepened the kiss, short-circuiting Adam’s brain.

It was the last Adam thought for a long while.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! pynch is not my normal ship to write, so I hope you liked it! leave me a comment or come talk to me on [tumblr](http://blueseyforthesoul.tumblr.com/) where i largely blog about bluesey


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